Friday, February 23, 2018

Russians More Positive about Cheka and KGB in Part Because Putin Regime has Suppressed Their Critics

Paul
Goble

Staunton, February 22 – A new Levada
Center poll showing that Russians currently associate the Cheka and KGB more with
the defense of the state than with state terrorism reflects many things,
sociologists say, but one of the most important, Denis Volkov says, is that the
current regime has suppressed those who have criticized these organizations in
the past.

The share of Russians who associate
the Cheka with political terror and repressions has fallen in the new poll to
12 percent, down from 23 percent in a 1997 survey. Instead, the share viewing
the organs as legitimate defenders of the state has grown (levada.ru/2018/02/22/k-100-letiyu-tajnoj-politsii/),
prompting questions as to why this trend has occurred.

Levada Center sociologist Denis Volkov
suggests that this development is connected “with the general increase in the legitimacy
of the state and force structures after the Crimean referendum and the war in Syria,
the absence of criticism of the work of the special services on TV and the
overwhelmingly positive image of Chekists in films and television programs” (rbc.ru/politics/21/02/2018/5a8d59f49a79471a70e186ba?from=main).

In his view, the state hasn’t come
up with “a complex program about improving the imge of the special services,”
but what it has done is to put pressure on those organizations which are involved
with the history of political repressions.” In 2014, for example, it listed Memorial
as a foreign agent, limiting its influence among many Russians.

Nikolay Mironov, the head of the
Moscow Center for Economic and Political Reforms, suggests that the increasing
approval for what the organs did in Soviet times reflects a growing demand
among Russians for order and justice. But he argues that “the theme of
repressions has not exhausted itself: many view the Soviet punitive system
negatively and don’t want it back.

And Leonty Byzov of the Moscow
Institute of Sociology says that the new attitudes are nothing more than “the
typical syndrome of defensive consciousness.” By a margin of two to one,
Russians blame their problems on foreigners rather than anyone else, the result
of propaganda about the country being “a fortress besieged by enemies.”

In that environment, any institution
that fought foreign agents is going to be viewed more positively; but that
hardly speaks to a long term or irreversible change.